


In Thy Brother's Eye

by Muccamukk



Category: Band of Brothers (TV 2001)
Genre: Christianity, First Meetings, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Officer Candidate School, Period Typical Attitudes, Pre-Canon, Religious Discussion, Sexual Fantasy, Sexuality Crisis, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-23
Updated: 2020-12-23
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:47:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,336
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28077963
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Muccamukk/pseuds/Muccamukk
Summary: Before he'd met Nix, Dick had been pretending that ignorance was freedom from sin.
Relationships: Lewis Nixon/Richard Winters
Comments: 25
Kudos: 68
Collections: Heavy Artillery Holiday Exchange 2020





	In Thy Brother's Eye

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fiorediloto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiorediloto/gifts).



> Happy holidays! I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> CN: Please read tags. This fic also contains some dream imagery involving sexual assault.
> 
> Thank you Tec for looking this over, and to Nenya_kanadka for beta reading.

Dick noticed the laugh first. Everyone in the barracks was joking and ribbing each other, pretending they weren't worried they wouldn't be able to hack it, but this laugh stood out: a low rattling chuckle that came from low in the man's chest, and signaled how little he cared for all of this braggadocio as surely as a semaphore flag.

Dick's eyes tracked through the barracks to find the source, skating past dozens of young men in olive drab, hair buzzed short or pomaded flat, uniforms perfect despite hours on trains and buses, past a mix of sergeants of various ranks and only the odd corporal like Dick himself. They were all milling through barracks with manual-perfect beds and footlockers, touching nothing as they waited for the inevitable surprise inspection, young men who thought they knew how the army worked, thought they were already ready for anything. There, down towards the door, standing just outside of a shaft of sunlight was the laughing man: dark haired, broad shouldered, tie askew, now smiling bemusedly at whatever the man next to him was saying. He wasn't really listening, Dick didn't think. He didn't seem, especially to care about any of this.

The laughing man's eyes flicked across the room, found Dick staring, and before Dick could look away, twisted his mouth in a grimace that seemed to say, "So here we are; what are you going to do, huh?"

Dick half lifted his hand, thinking to wave, but before he could, the inspection hit, and they all rushed to their bunks and snapped to attention. Dick's and the other man's were about three rows apart, on opposite sides of the barracks.

The man—"Nixon" was what the drill sergeant shouted at him—got twenty push ups for the crooked tie. He dropped and did them right there, still smirking.

Dick had long since worked out how to watch someone while technically standing at attention, eyes front.

* * *

In the mess that night, Dick found his way to the same table as Nixon, who was talking just as easily to the stranger next to him as he had to the man he hadn't really been listening to in the barracks. When Dick dropped down next to him, he looked up and gave Dick a little nod of recognition. He looked at Dick's name patch, before saying, "Winters!" like he was performing a trick.

"Sure," Dick said, "Dick Winters. Hear you're Nixon, and you like doing push ups."

"What's not to love about push ups?" Nixon asked, though he'd actually been the only one caught out on that initial inspection.

"I try to avoid extra ones, when I can," Dick told him.

Nixon looked him up and down, a question in his eyes, and then surprised Dick by actually asking it: "I can't tell if you're one of those brownnosers, who likes to go around reminding everyone that things'll be easier if they just follow the rules—a lie in army life, incidentally—or if you're just honest, and don't care who knows it, which won't help you either."

"Maybe I just don't like doing push ups," Dick said. Though what he didn't like was the humiliation of being made to do them, of being found out in an imperfection he should have been able to spot and correct on his own. He didn't like the sour taste of failure.

"Doesn't look that way to me," Nixon said. Before Dick knew what was happening, he had his hand on Dick's shoulder and was kneading the muscles there. "Looks to me like you're in peak fighting shape."

"'When I don't have to,'" Dick reminded him, pushing back the flush of pleasure at Nixon's admiration. "You didn't seem to have any trouble with them either."

"I do a lot of push ups I don't have to do," Nixon said, and shrugged in that "What can you do?" way before turning back to the slop on his plate.

Dick found his gaze kept moving over to Nixon, even as they ate, the strength of his profile standing out against the row of other men behind him, the only one in focus.

* * *

Dick didn't really need anything at the PX, but the walk there filled a few bare moments and let him stretch his legs after a morning bent over books working out azimuths and declinations. At some point they'd probably be allowed to touch one of Bennings' many field pieces, but Dick suspected it wasn't going to be today. He'd always had a head for math, and the turgid pace of the explanations left him bouncing his pencil eraser on the edge of his notepad, and mentally composing a letter to DeEtta about how they let just any ninny into OCS these days. Two rows over, Nixon had been staring into space, the smile tugging at his lips an indication that wherever he was, it was better than Fort Benning, Georgia.

Nixon followed him, sliding into step beside him. "What are we buying?"

Dick considered. "Could use some more stationary."

"For all those love letters you keep writing?" Nixon asked.

"Sure," Dick agreed, because if he'd found one thing since he and DeEtta had started writing, it was telling someone you weren't writing love letters and didn't have a girlfriend only convinced everyone of the opposite, the effect growing stronger the louder a fellow protested. He reached inside his jacket and pulled out his wallet, flipping it open to the picture he kept of him and DeEtta riding horses in Asheville, North Carolina.

Nixon took the whole wallet from his hands, glancing at DeEtta before flipping to the family photo of Dick with his parents and kid sister. When he handed the wallet back, he gave Dick a puzzled look, as if they'd been talking to cross purposes. "Not bad," was his whole comment, and he drummed his fingers over his own jacket pocket. Dick wondered if he would offer his own picture in exchange, but instead he just said, "I'm married, you know."

Dick hadn't known. It seemed unlikely somehow, but he couldn't pin down why. He supposed Nixon just didn't strike him as the marrying kind—though as handsome as he was, he probably wouldn't have any trouble finding interested women. Dick's glance dropped to the fingers still drumming on Nixon's pocket; he wasn't wearing a ring.

"Oh?" Dick prompted when that comment had hung in the air too long.

"Yup." Nixon considered for a moment before adding, "Month before I got drafted, goddammit."

"She up in New Jersey, then?" That was about the only thing Dick did know about Nixon, having not even picked up his first name yet.

Nixon laughed, a sound that still made Dick lean in to hear it better. "Not in a million years," he said with feeling. "No. Not Kathy. We had a place in the city, then she's been back with her parents. She's waiting to hear where I'm posted. Haven't seen a hell of a lot of her in the last year."

"Sorry to hear it," Dick said, unsure why Nixon was sharing his marital woes. "That must be hard."

"Hard. Yeah. Sure." Nixon gave Dick another sideways look, and this time Dick met his eyes and held his gaze until Nixon smirked and looked away.

Benning had a decent PX, certainly bigger than Camp Croft's, but there still wasn't much past the basics, and Dick knew that if he ever wanted to send something home, or to DeEtta, he'd have to go into town to find it.

Nixon was indeed just along for the ride, as he flipped idly through a month-old issue of Life while Dick picked up paper and envelopes and looked at the candy selection. No Hershey bars, again. He picked a Babe Ruth, and slapped it on the counter. Nixon declined to buy the magazine.

On the walk back, Nixon glanced at the sheaf of paper tucked under his arm, and said, "Well, that should last you a whole week!"

"I write to my parents, too," Dick said, not wanting to be cast as a milksop over "his girl."

"Oh!" Nixon put his hand over his chest in a parody of surprise, but then he shook his head again and let it drop. He watched as a squad jogged by in PT formation, boots hitting the ground in perfect time, sun gleaming off their perspiring skin. "Well, do you want to go into town this weekend?"

Dick couldn't quite follow the shift in conversation, or where Nixon was going with it, maybe he was just one of those guys who said every thought that flitted through his head. "No," he said, "I've heard the buses are pretty bad. They'll wash out anyone who doesn't make it back by reveille on Monday."

"Suit yourself," Nixon said, but he looked disappointed.

"Maybe another time," Dick said, not sure why he needed to throw Nixon a bone. "You can scout out the transportation."

"Sure," Nixon agreed, but when the weekend came, he stayed on base same as Dick.

* * *

"Come on, Dick, this is not how you spend a Sunday afternoon off," Nix was saying.

It certainly wasn't how any of the other officer candidates were spending it. The two of them had the barracks to themselves, rows of empty, perfectly-made bunks stretching out across the echoing room. The only disturbances to order were Dick sitting on the edge of his bunk with his writing desk balanced on his crossed legs, and Nixon sprawled out on his own, arms folded behind his head, booted feet hanging over the bottom rail.

"Oh, how would you spend it?" Dick asked, curiosity mixed with sarcasm in equal measure. In truth, he was bored, and his heart wasn't in the letter he was plodding away at. He still couldn't work out why if Nixon thought letter writing was in and of itself boring—he claimed to write to his own wife but rarely and his parents not at all—that he seemed to find watching Dick write letters a subject of great interest.

"Well, I don't know," Nixon said, making a show of considering the options. "We could go to the PX again, get a couple milkshakes and burgers. You like ice cream, don't you? Or," he continued before Dick could point out that they'd done that an hour ago, "we could go for a walk, take in the charming environs, go watch the paratroopers do PT, all those lithe young men doing jumping jacks and so on."

Dick made a skeptical noise, though in truth he didn't mind watching the men in Benning for Airborne training. They always struck him as a cut above the average doughboy.

" _Or_ "—Nixon sat up, swinging his feet off the ground so they hit the floor with a punctuating thud—"we could just stay here and talk."

He put enough emphasis on the last word that Dick raised his head to scrutinize him. Nixon was sitting with his legs spread wide enough that his trousers clung to the muscles along the insides of his things, his hands draped over them, drawing the eye. Dick's gaze flicked up to Nixon's face, expecting the usual careless nonchalance, but instead he was biting his upper lip and smiling uncertainly.

"I don't think..." Dick said slowly. He might be from a relatively small city in Pennsylvania, but he wasn't so naive that he didn't know a come on when he saw one. Dick tried to decide if what he didn't think was that whatever Nixon was proposing, they absolutely should not be doing it in the barracks where just anyone could walk in, or if he didn't think that Nixon had the right man, or something else. Dick set his writing desk aside, sat up straighter, pulling his leg in so it crossed at the thigh, not his ankle over his knee, and said. "I don't think I understand," in the firmest voice he could manage.

Nixon narrowed his eyes at Dick, and slowly nodded. "Yeah. Sure," he said, and flopped back down on the bed. Dick assumed he'd lose interest after that, having made the offer and been turned down, but he didn't move, just kept lounging on his bunk doing nothing, while Dick tried to gather his wits about him.

It wasn't Dick's first proposition by another man, though it was the first that had been made by someone he thought of as a friend, rather than a stranger in passing, like the driver of one of his hitchhiking rides. Or was Nixon a friend? It could be his entire interest in Dick was based on an assumption that he'd be available for sex, though what about Dick had led him to that conclusion, Dick couldn't say. He wanted to ask, but had already buried the topic conclusively, and if they were going to remain friends it would have to stay buried.

Instead, Dick got up, tidied his bed, put his writing desk in his footlocker, and asked, "How about that walk?"

Nixon chuffed in amusement, or perhaps disbelief, but he got up and followed Dick out of the barracks, all the same. They went and watched the paratroopers' PT.

* * *

In his dream, Dick was catching that ride on a rainy night in the hills of West Virginia. The driver put his hand on Dick's thigh, like he had the first time, and said, "There's a hotel up ahead. Why don't we pull in there? I can make you feel real good," and instead of moving the man's hand and asking to be dropped off, Dick did nothing, and the man pulled into the hotel.

The scene shifted to the bedroom, where the man was undressing Dick, unbuttoning his uniform blouse and opening his fly. Dick stood still, frozen and passive, not able to protest, not seeming to want to. The man pushed him back onto the bed, lifting his legs and spreading them wide. Dick was already hard, the heat of lust filling his body. He looked down and saw the man still fully dressed except for his open fly, his cock sticking out from his navy suit, huge, and impossible to fit inside Dick.

Instead of fear, Dick felt a sort of horrified fascination, a desire to see where this would go. He lay still and waited, watching as the man came closer and closer. He pushed into Dick's ass, and Dick's body gave way to him, feeling nothing but pleasure as the man held him down and slowly fucked him.

The man looked down at Dick's erection, smirking. "See, I told you. Hard," he said, and it was in Nixon's voice. Just wrapping his hand around Dick's cock was enough to make him come.

Dick woke with a start, disorientated, staring up into the dark. It took him a moment to understand that he was in the officer candidates' barracks at Fort Benning, not in some roadside hotel in West Virginia. Either way, he was rock hard, his cock pushing up against his skivvies and tenting the light wool blanket they all slept under. Dick sighed and rolled onto his side, willing the erection to go away.

He hated this dream, how it had kept coming back and clinging to him since that night he'd been hitchhiking, how he always knew it was a dream but could never change his actions, how it was just the latest in a line of perverted fantasies his sleeping brain had been cooking up for him for the last ten years of his life. He hated that now Nixon was in the mix, and Dick wasn't going to be able to look at him without thinking of being pushed down onto the bed in some hotel room and opening his legs.

Sometimes, in the dreams, Dick fought and tried to stop what was happening, but never did he not want it. He always surrendered eventually, and he always woke up so hard his cock ached. Dick didn't have to hire an analyst to know what it meant about him. One or two dreams, he'd have been able to write off as his brain spinning up nonsense, like those nightmares about showing up in class naked and then finding out it was an exam day for a class he'd forgotten to attend, but but he couldn't dismiss something that had been happening every few weeks for years, not when it so clearly excited his body.

As much as he would like to blame Nixon, Dick couldn't. It wasn't really his fault. Nixon had just been able to see through Dick's veneer of normality to what he was under the skin, and had reasonably acted on that perception, just like that man in the car had the year before. Sometimes, Dick wondered if everyone could see that about him, like he had a sign taped to his back reading, "Kick me!" or if it was just fellow travelers, as it were. Were that the case, the reverse ought to be true, and Dick seemed perpetually unable to see it coming before the other guy made a move. Nixon had been flirting all week, and Dick hadn't let himself clue in until it came to a direct proposition. As if pretending something wasn't true could negate its existence, even though no matter how hard he prayed, that had never worked out to be true.

Thinking about Nixon wasn't making his cock go soft any faster, so Dick turned his thoughts to reviewing the math problems of the day before until he drifted back into sleep.

* * *

Monday, they switched from charting artillery to navigation and maneuvering in the field, though most of the maneuvering that Dick saw was Nixon managing to get paired with Dick, when he was supposed to be with Sergeant Parnell. After that, they were given a map and a compass, and told to find half a dozen way points and show up at a final set of co-ordinates in time for lunch. Dick had in mind that this first run was meant to set them up to show off everything that could go wrong, and had no intention of being the butt of any jokes.

"I want to be the first team in," Dick said.

He expected Nixon to roll his eyes and reiterate his speech about the inevitability of army push ups and why bother putting in the extra effort, but instead he grinned at Dick and said, "Yeah, that sounds like you. All right."

He took the map, turned it around a couple of times, glanced at the sun, then the compass, and started tracing contour lines with his fingertip.

"You don't strike me as the kind of guy who was in the boy scouts," Dick said, watching him curiously. They'd learned basic map and compass work at Croft, and he'd read the field manual, but Dick had only ever picked up the general idea of it.

"Used to race yachts," Nixon said absently, still measuring distances with his fingers. "This isn't that different from nautical charts. Christ, look at that last leg. They really are setting us up. We'll see about that."

Dick had some idea that finding things on the water and finding them on land had different principles behind them, but when Nix pointed the direction they needed to start, Dick followed him.

Nixon might not be the most graceful man in the field, still crouching awkwardly as they ran low and tried to evade attention, but to Dick it seemed like Nixon had a compass in his mind's eye, and the map memorized. In the low, swampy countryside that made up most of Benning's reserve land, he rarely needed to do more than glance around before working out exactly where they were and which way they needed to go. Dick would have chalked it up to bluster, but they hit every way point dead on.

"Yacht racing, huh?" Dick said as they jogged along the last stretch.

"Yeah," Nixon agreed, puffing a little at the pace, but not dropping behind. "Kept me out of the pool hall."

Dick huffed a laugh. "Did it?"

"Nope." Nixon's face was flushed from exertion and his ODs were dark with sweat and sticking to his back and sides. It was too easy to imagine another kind of exertion as the cause, and again Dick cursed that damn dream. He'd been doing fine before. "What about you?" Nixon asked.

Dick shook his head. "No, no pool halls," he said, but felt like he should have something to offer as an alternative, at least to put off any comment about tipping cows or baling hay. "Used to go ice skating."

"Right." Nixon said it like he'd uncovered some deviance that he'd always suspected, and Dick thought he'd have used that exact same tone no matter what activity he'd offered as a use for his free time. "Bet you played football, too."

"Sure," Dick said, though he'd never put much effort into it, more going along with what was expected of most vaguely athletic boys in high school. "But you were too busy racing yachts."

Nixon was the one who'd thrown it out there, but now he seemed embarrassed by having just flaunted his obvious wealth. He didn't have time to answer, anyway.

Ahead, the path widened, and Dick saw the marker for their final co-ordinates. They looked at each other and without saying a word peeled off the trail and started to worm their way through the brush, scouting out the location for vengeful instructors as they approached.

But when they got to the edge of the clearing, Dick saw nothing out of the ordinary. Certainly, he didn't see the usual drill sergeant with his boots up on the steering wheel of his jeep, looking at the grubby recruits with undisguised disdain.

"I don't think they're here yet," Nixon whispered, unable to hide the satisfaction in his voice, not even when he added, "either we beat them to it, or they're planning to leave us out here until after lunch."

Dick thought it was a little early in the week for the pretended abandonment trick. He imagined himself and Nixon lolling against the goal post, their shoulders brushing as they sunned themselves. If Dick had learned anything about drill sergeants, it was that they didn't like to be shown up. If they couldn't find fault with Dick and Nixon showing up early, they'd find it in something else. "If we were smart," he mused, "we'd back off fifty yards or so, until we heard the jeep, then jog up like we'd just gotten here."

Nixon laughed, then stopped when he realized Dick wasn't joking. "So you really don't want those extra push ups," he said, and though he was still smiling, Dick could hear the disappointment in his voice. He'd raced all the way here with Dick, and now they were going to play it safe.

It stung more than Dick thought it would after so short a friendship: losing Nixon's esteem. Dick pushed himself to his feet and walked over to the post marking their destination, and then sat down next to it.

Nixon grinned like a sunrise, and followed, "This is what I keep telling you. There's no sense trying to avoid the wrath of the army."

"See what you say about that in half an hour." It was different, Dick thought, walking into fire knowingly. It was different doing it with a friend at your side. He leaned back a little, and so did Nixon, and their shoulders met over the stake marking their goal.

The next day, they both failed a bunk inspection at reveille and got fifty push-ups apiece. It was, Dick decided, entirely worth it.

* * *

"I looked into the transportation problem," Nixon said a week later, dropping on Dick's bunk hard enough to jar his pen and slash a line across the middle of a letter to Annie. Nixon had vanished with the rest of their cohort for the weekend, scraping in just before taps on Sunday. Dick had spent the same time alternately wandering around the base and studying, thinking it sure felt a lot emptier than it ought to.

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah," Nixon continued, ignoring Dick's pretended disinterest. "I got back all right, didn't I?"

Dick shrugged. He'd come close. He'd heard a couple guys in another cohort had tried to run down the last bus, missed it, and been drummed out of OSC without recourse. That wasn't going to be him. "The way I hear it, there's not a heck of a lot in Columbus anyway."

"Saloons, prostitutes and tattoo joints," Nixon agreed cheerfully. "One usually attends them in roughly that order."

"That way you end up with the young lady's name on your butt?" Dick asked. An image flashed through his mind: Nixon lying on his stomach with his pants pulled down, whimpering as someone drummed into his ass with a tattoo needle; Dick dismissed it.

"That and a case of the clap," Nixon said, thoughts clearly not following Dick's. "Or blood poisoning."

"You make it sound so appealing," Dick said, but the idea of seeing Nixon cut loose had its appeal. He had a quality to him that Dick couldn't quite name, or wouldn't name, rippling under his skin. It was like looking at an out of focus photograph and trying to work out the details. Dick didn't think he'd find any real clarity until he saw Nixon off base, if not out of uniform.

"Come on," Nixon continued, bumping his shoulder into Dick's, "you and me, we'll go Saturday morning, rent a room, come back Sunday afternoon with time to spare."

"And between?" Dick asked.

Nixon shrugged. "We'll have some fun. I found an ice cream place that doesn't serve that army crap."

Dick doubted that was true, given the state of cream and sugar rations, but he couldn't help smiling at the idea of Nixon scouring a two-bit army town for something to lure his buddy off base. He made a show of sighing and pretending to have been pushed just a hair too far before conceding, "Well, if there's ice cream..." and starting to hammer out the details.

From Nixon's laugh, Dick wasn't fooling him for a minute.

* * *

There really wasn't a hell of a lot more to Columbus, Georgia, than what Nixon had described, though the ice cream had not been an invention. It wasn't notably better than Benning's, but the shop did have more choices of flavors. Dick poked around the main street's shops for something to send to DeEtta and his parents, but didn't find much more than postcards. He tried commenting that Nixon could send something to Kathy, which at least made him laugh.

Three weeks in, and Dick still hadn't figured what the hell was going on with Nixon and his wife, and wasn't sure why he cared, at least beyond idle curiosity.

It became even less clear when Nixon's chosen dinner venue was a rowdy army bar serving greasier food than the PX. It was packed with soldiers from Benning, and Dick and Nixon ended up sitting at the bar for lack of a table. Dick picked listlessly at his fries, and considered what part of what animal might have produced the patty in his hamburger, and if he wanted to know. He had half an eye on the butter bar beside him, who kept getting his elbows into Dick's, and the other half on Nixon, who was leaning over the bar to argue with the bartender about different kinds of whiskey he might or might not have for what price.

The junior officer with the elbows had been talking to an even younger man in a ragged corduroy jacket and jeans, and now he hopped off his bar stool and followed the kid into the toilets at the back of the bar.

Dick looked back at his food, trying to and failing to suppress a laugh. "Of course," he said, dropped the soggy fry back onto his plate, and slid to his feet.

"What, are you going?" Nixon demanded. He'd had two whiskeys already, was onto his third, and suddenly Dick didn't want to see past his skin anymore.

"Back to our room. Not hungry."

"It's only eight o'clock!" Nixon protested, and really Dick had no idea how it had gotten even that late. He supposed it had taken a while to get their food, and Nixon had gotten those two drinks into him.

Dick shrugged, shaking his head. He thought that if he stayed for another minute that Nixon would be able find some way to talk him into sticking around, and at the bottom of his heart, Dick didn't want to. He knew if he stayed here, he'd just feel dirty for doing so, and weak for giving in, better not to give himself the chance to be led into temptation. "I'll see you later, Nix," he said, pulling his garrison cap out of his belt and heading for the door. He didn't look at Nixon and didn't look back.

They were sharing a narrow room with a pair of cots notably less comfortable than the bunk beds at Benning and a WC not far enough down the hall. Dick lay on his back with his hands folded across his chest and listened to the slamming of doors and the rattling of pipes. He should have told Nixon not to bring a pick up back here. They weren't supposed to have guests up to their rooms, but Dick didn't think Nixon would have any trouble sneaking one past the concierge. He thought briefly about pretending to sleep while Nixon screwed that boy in the corduroy jacket into the neighboring bed, or was screwed into it? What did Nixon like? The whole train of thought was giving Dick a hard on, so he dug out a couple field manuals and read them until he slept. He didn't hear Nixon come in, but he was there when Dick woke the next morning.

How Nixon had survived as long as he had in the army was a mystery to Dick. He did not like order; he did not like doing what he was told, and he particularly did not like reveille. After shaking his shoulder got a mumbled response, Dick gave up and went to church.

It wasn't the right kind of Lutherans, but it was closer than the non-denominational Protestantism that that chaplains had put on every Sunday he'd stayed on base. The hymns were the same, and Dick let the music carry him away, lifting his soul to God along with all the other sinners.

The sermon was from Luke, speaking on removing the sin from yourself before you were able to help your brother, and on how a man who did not follow faith with action were like men who built a house on poor foundations: he would crumble in the face of a flood. "For every tree is known by his own fruit."

Dick tried to meditate on the meaning of God's law as revealed to His people, but his thoughts kept drifting back to the solid feel of Nixon's shoulder as he shook him, his image of Nixon and some young man, one of them on their knees. Dick had always believed in the power of kneeling in prayer, the submission before God as something pure and holy. Now, when he knelt to pray with the others, it was difficult to turn his mind from another reason for a man to take this position, another kind of submission.

Dick clasped his hands and prayed, asking forgiveness, asking that this burden be taken from his shoulders, promising God a life free of sin. He knew it was likely all hollow. He'd prayed for this for years, offered this barter before, and as far as he could tell, God's answer had been a plain and resounding "no."

Dick didn't know if that was meant to be a sign that he should keep striving, or if he'd been abandoned. He didn't believe, like the Presbyterians did, that some souls were elect while others were damned. There was always some way to find one's way back to God's grace, if only he could work out what it was. If only he prayed hard enough, did justly, loved mercy, and walked humbly with his God.

When the service ended, and all were sent out in peace and hope, Dick shook the minister's hand and thanked him, but declined to stay and be cooed over by church ladies and their daughters. "My buddy's waiting for me," he said.

The minister smiled knowingly. "Not one of the faithful?"

"Not before noon," Dick acknowledged, though it occurred to him that he had no idea what, if any, religion Nixon followed.

The minister said something about how hopefully Dick's faith would rub off on his friend, and Dick replied politely. On the walk back to the hotel, he had to wonder if it was more likely to be the other way around.

Nixon was not only awake but mostly dressed by the time Dick got back. He laughed when Dick said he'd been at church, and then again when Dick asked if he'd had a good time the night before. "Outstanding," he said in a tone that implied the opposite.

"Found a friend?" Dick asked.

"Gentlemen never tell," Nixon replied smartly.

"It's a good thing I'm asking you then."

Nixon paused in the middle of donning his jacket, and gave Dick a narrow look. "I had the impression that you weren't interested in that sort of thing."

"I'm not!" Dick answered too quickly.

"Mmhmm." Nixon tugged his tie into a semblance of order, tossed his shaving kit in his bag, even though he hadn't shaved, and held the door open for Dick to precede him. When they'd checked out and were walking along main street, Nixon finally said, "Since your prurient interest in my sex life won't be slaked in any other way: yes, I did find a _friend_ last night. Do you want to hear about what we did, too?"

Dick knew that if he said he didn't, Nixon would correctly assume the opposite, and took another line of approach. "Doesn't your wife mind?"

If he'd expected the question to set Nixon back, he'd have been wrong. Instead he shrugged and said, "Not enough to divorce me. I try to keep it out of her line of fire."

"That's decent of you." They stopped at a diner, less packed than the bars had been the night before. Dick suspected that ten in the morning on a Sunday was a little early for most men on a weekend pass. "Let's catch the first bus back," Dick said.

Nixon shrugged, drank his coffee before it had cooled, and grimaced at both the heat and the flavor. "Not going to get that tattoo then?"

"Maybe next time," Dick said, and had a feeling he'd be saying that a lot if his friendship with Nixon continued.

"Yeah," Nixon scoffed, "I can tell that you're absolutely going to let me drag you into town again."

"We'll see," Dick said, but suspected that Nixon was right: Dick would spend the rest of his weekends at Fort Benning, and Nixon would come into town for more alcohol and more friends. He wasn't sure why the thought made him feel as desolate as it did. Dick hardly knew Nixon, and hadn't had enough time to count on his friendship. Maybe it was the idea of a promising young man like Nixon dissipating himself into nothing, and for what? Dick had no idea why Nixon burned as hot as he did. None of it seemed like it could be worth it. Certainly the hangover wasn't treating him well.

He watched Nixon eat, thinking back to the first day of OCS, how he'd felt pulled towards him. Was that a matter of like attracting like?

"Keep looking at me like that, and a man might start to get ideas," Nixon said, mouth curved into a mocking smile. Dick dropped his eyes to his plate, but that didn't slow Nixon down. "That's why I thought you were interested: that look, right from day one."

"You were mistaken," Dick said, but he knew that there was more color in his face than there should be.

"That's how we find each other, you know?" Nixon continued. "A man meets another's eyes, holds his gaze for a little longer than a normal guy would, says something that could be taken just the right way, touches his arm."

Dick screwed the napkin in his hands like he was trying to wring its neck, but the damn heat wouldn't leave his face. He shook his head, but Nixon's smile just widened.

"Is that what you were doing? Were you leading me on, Dick? Being a tease?" Nixon's voice was low and sweet as molasses, every word sticking in Dick's mind. He thought the worst part was that something inside of him had wanted Nixon to think of him like that. The part of his soul that kept manufacturing those dreams probably thought that letting Nixon think that Dick was like him was a fantastic idea.

What had they said in church? "For a good tree bringeth not forth corrupt fruit; neither doth a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit." If Dick's soul was corrupt, then how long before that took form in his actions? But Dick didn't believe that. He didn't believe that men were born corrupt or good through and through. He had a choice in what actions he took.

"I apologize," he said stiffly. "That was not my intention."

Only when Nixon slumped back into his seat with a dramatic sigh did Dick realize that he'd been leaning in a little more with every word. "It's fine," he said. "I guess you don't intend very much of this. Goddamn tragedy."

"I still want to be friends." It came out as more of a plea than Dick would have liked.

Nixon smiled, a small, soft thing that only just curved his lips, but crinkled the corners of his eyes. "I'd like that."

Dick smiled back. "That's good."

* * *

Nixon kept his word, and if he didn't stop flirting and dropping hints, he curtailed the excess of the first three weeks. Dick for his part looked away every time he found his gaze lingering on Nixon's face, or other parts of his body. He'd so far managed to avoid looking at all during shared showers. It wasn't the kind of victory Dick should feel proud of, but he'd take what he could get at that point. If the fruit of his soul was his actions, he wasn't going to do a damn thing out of line.

As Dick had predicted, Nixon put up only a token effort at luring him back into Columbus the weekend following, and only shrugged when Dick said he intended to spend the time studying and catching up on letters home.

"You study more than any man here," Nixon said dismissively. Dick had barely seen him crack a book, but he always seemed to know the answers when asked. Whether that was due to studying in secret, a perfect memory, or an unparalleled ability to BS, Dick had yet to determine.

Nixon scraped in minutes before taps on Sunday night, still drunk, and collapsed on Dick's bunk in a heap of disarray.

Dick jammed his pillow under Nixon's head so that he wouldn't put his face in Dick's lap.

"I was starting to worry about you," Dick said.

"Oh ye of little faith." Nixon tipped his head back so that he looked up at Dick. "It pierces my goddamn soul that you don't believe in me."

Dick frowned. That was a little more serious than he'd come to expect from a drunk and affectionate Nixon. "I believe in you just fine," he said appeasingly. He patted Nixon's shoulder and tried not to think of that little speech in the diner. "It's the Columbus bus service that I doubt."

Nixon didn't look terribly mollified, but he reached up and patted at Dick's knee, finding his shin first. "Hey, do you want to go for a walk? Let's go for a walk."

They still had half an hour before lights out, and Dick figured it would do something in the line of sobering him up a little. "All right."

Dick thought he might have to take Nixon's arm to steady him, but he wasn't too bad once he was up and standing again, only swaying a little before finding his equilibrium. He waited until they were out of the barracks and on the track circling the obstacle course before talking. The fifty-foot jump tower loomed behind them in the twilight.

"I don't think you shoulda agreed to be my friend," Nixon said.

"I was the one who suggested it," Dick pointed out, pushing back how the possibility of an ending made his heart lurch.

"Yeah, but you don't know how much trouble I can be," Nixon said. He tried to catch at Dick's wrist, but Dick's hands were jammed in his pockets, and it was easy enough to twist away.

"I think I've got a fair idea," Dick said, wondering if Nixon expected Dick to name his defects: drunk, adulterer, queer, distinctly lacking in patriotism, respect or anything resembling faith.

But it seemed as though Nixon wanted to make the list himself. "I went to a headshrinker once," Nixon said. "Went. Dad said he'd cut me off if I didn't. This is after I got kicked outta Yale. You know what he said?"

"That you should stop drinking?" Dick guessed. The whole field of psychology had always struck Dick as a little murky. He'd skirted around it in college, and from what he could tell, it mostly had to do with hating your father and purposefully forgetting things, both of which he'd already figured out about Nixon without the aid of a fancy degree or an Austrian accent.

Nixon laughed. "Funnily enough, yes. So I distracted him with the whole H problem"—Dick almost interrupted him to ask, but worked out that Nixon meant homosexual in time to stop himself—"and then he decided that was why I was drinking in the first place. Clever men, these psychiatrists. Anyway, the point is, he said that what I needed to do was sleep with the right kind of woman, and that would turn me normal fast as anything. Well, he said marry, marry the right woman. So I did."

"Doesn't seem like she was the right one," Dick said, only thinking better of it too late. It wasn't the kind of talk his mother would approve of: speaking ill of a lady who wasn't even there to defend herself.

Certainly, Nixon didn't seem that interested in defending her. "Wedded her, bedded her, and still as queer as a rubber nickel. How do you figure that?"

He slumped against the eight-foot wall, looking defeated even as he lit a smoke.

Dick considered. Nixon seemed to want an honest answer, but Dick didn't have any advice to give. If he'd worked out how to stop wanting what he wanted, he'd have done it a decade ago. "I figure that psychiatry isn't good for a whole lot," he said finally.

"Ha. Yeah."

"What does Mrs. Nixon think of all this?" Dick asked.

It was almost full dark now, nearly too dark to make out the outline of Nixon's body against the wall, but his cigarette bobbed as he shrugged. "Mrs. Nixon likes being Mrs. Nixon," he said. "I pay her a hell of a lot more than the friends I meet in town. Enough to keep her happy. For now."

It was the most stunningly cruel thing Dick had ever heard, and for a moment he couldn't form any words at all. He should speak up for her honor, tell Nixon he expected better of a man he'd call his friend, say something, but instead he stood there in the dark, and wondered if that was his future too. It wouldn't be of course, Dick didn't have the money to keep a woman like that, not one he couldn't be a real husband to.

"Goddamn war's the only reason we're still married," Nixon said. In that moment, he sounded perfectly sober. "If I get home, who knows."

Dick had to wonder how hard Nixon could have possibly tried with only one month between his wedding and his induction, but it wasn't his place to suggest that Nixon should just work harder at loving his wife.

"Do you like it?" he asked instead, even as he knew it was a dumb question. Dick seemed to have a lot of those that night.

This time Nixon did laugh outright. "No. I hate it. That's why I can't stop doing it."

The cherry fell off Nixon's cigarette, sparking towards the ground. Dick knew without checking his watch that they were going to be late, and he should make Nixon go back to the barracks, but he couldn't. He thought this was the only chance he'd get to really ask about this, with Nixon just drunk enough to be talkative, but no so drunk he was incoherent.

"What about you, Dick? What are you doing with your little H problem?"

It was the first time anyone had named it, no matter how obscurely, Dick included. He'd thought it would be shocking, but instead the knowledge of it drifted down like snow and settled as a new weight on his shoulders. He could say that he didn't have a problem, but Nixon could see through him like no one else he'd ever met.

"Praying, mostly," Dick answered.

"Yeah? How's that working out?"

Dick shook his head, even though Nixon wouldn't be able to see him in the dark. "Well, I haven't done anything about it, and it hasn't gone away, so I guess it depends on how you look at it."

"Sure," Nixon said, the single word loaded with a dictionary's worth of cynicism. He flipped open his lighter, held it up to his smoke, then put it down again and dropped the cigarette, grinding it out for good measure. "Well, this was a scream, but it's time for good little officer candidates to be tucked into bed."

"What are you going to do then?" Dick asked.

"Give it the ol' college try, as always," Nixon told him. His feet were unerring in the dark as he led the way back. Just before they got to the barracks' door, he chuckled and added, "College try."

Someday, Dick was going to ask about Nixon getting kicked out of Yale, but for now he was going to try to sleep and forget what Nixon had said about not being able to stop. They were different men, and Nixon in his way was weak. Just because they had the same problem, didn't mean they'd be forced into the same solution.

Dick knew that if he was smart, he'd break off this peculiar friendship. All he was doing was putting himself in the way of temptation, but it felt so good to see and be seen. For once in his life, he was with someone who understood, even if he didn't approve of Dick's methods. There was no sin in that, surely.

Dick slept, and dreamed again of Nixon slowly fucking him in the middle of the crowded barracks.

* * *

About half way through the course, their cohort moved into new barracks to make room for the next class. The candidates who were doing particularly well were granted double rooms, while the instructors put the rest in groups of six.

Dick stood at ease and listened as the drill sergeant read out room assignments. He felt a small pang of disappointment as his own name paired with Sergeant Dalton's, a weathered army lifer old enough to be Dick's father. Though Dick supposed at least his rooms would be quiet. Dalton conked out at lights out like the officer of the watch had a switch for him too, didn't snore, and spent most of his free time writing letters to his wife and kids. Nixon got paired with McAllister, who Dick didn't know well, except that he had a complexion like wallpaper paste and didn't say much. Dick suspected that he'd be hearing a lot about that in the coming weeks.

The instructors seemed to be counting it as a training exercise to make the candidates drag their footlockers across the camp by hand, rather than letting them use a truck and a fraction of the time. As Dick lugged gear half a mile to the new barracks, he thought he'd like the army a lot better if it wasn't always asking him to do something pointless for no reason. Understanding that it was on purpose didn't make it any better.

They had half an hour before mess, and Dick spent all of five minutes squaring away in his new room, then sat on his footlocker and listened to the thumps and shouts of the other men moving their gear. Dalton wasn't in evidence, but he probably needed a bit more time. Dick tried to decide if he should find Nixon's room, just to see where he was situated. From the numbering, he thought it might be in the next building over.

"Want to hold the door?" Nixon asked.

Dick rose automatically and pushed the flimsy plywood door open, staring open mouthed as Nixon wrestled his footlocker into Dick's room and dropped it next to the other bunk.

"I'll help you with that when they make you move again," Dick commented.

Nixon sprawled on his bunk and lit a smoke. "That's nice of you, but I'm in the right room. Talked Gunnarsen into switching me and Dalton."

Sergeant Gunnarsen was six feet four inches of US Army regulations and anger. Dick couldn't imagine even Nixon talking him into anything.

Dick briefly considered asking if Nixon had performed some kind of sexual favor on him, but decided that he both didn't want to know if it were true, and that dragging up sex when he'd said he'd wanted the issue put to bed wasn't going to be a good start to being roommates with his greatest temptation. He should also stop thinking of things in terms of putting them to bed.

"Well, I'll still help you move your footlocker, if it comes to it," Dick said.

"All the way to the train home?" Nixon asked, though he didn't seem worried about being booted out.

"If I have to." He gave Nixon and his footlocker a deliberate once over. It was already hot for May, at least by Pennsylvanian standards, and sweat dripped down Nixon's face and stained his collar dark. He'd lost his tie somewhere along the way, and his footlocker was scuffed from having been dropped. Actually, for a footlocker that had likely only seen six months more service than Dick's, Nixon's looked like it had been on several lengthy sea voyages with particularly careless stevedores in every port. "You know this room will be inspected as a unit," Dick commented.

Nixon snorted. "Still trying to avoid those push ups?"

"When at all possible," Dick said. "Though there's another reason I've been meaning to talk to you about."

"Oh yes?" Nixon propped himself up on his elbow to look at Dick. With his cigarette dangling from his lips, and his legs spread, he looked like a French painting of a particularly low rate prostitute, uncaring as to who her latest gentleman caller was.

"Yeah," Dick said, trying to think how to put it. He'd been working up to mentioning it to his parents, too, even though he was pretty sure they'd hit the roof. "I, uh, I've been thinking of applying to join the Airborne, and they only take officers who graduate at the top of their class in all areas of study."

He'd expected Nixon to make fun of him, or come up with some comment about Dick's interest in the taut, bronzed young men seen jogging around the camp, but he just said, "Sounds like you've already gone and gotten the application."

"I looked into the qualifications," Dick said, not sure why he was defensive. He didn't owe Nixon an accounting of his career plans before he'd even made them.

"Huh," Nixon said, and then fell silent for a moment, considering Dick. "Well, why the hell not? I think you'd be good at it, and we both know you'll get top marks, as long as I try not to drag you down with me."

Dick didn't know why he'd expected Nixon to say more, have some reaction, when for the most part Nixon could barely be prompted to care about himself, but it still stung. "What about you?" he asked. "What are you going to apply for?"

Nixon shrugged one shoulder, the angle of his body tipping sideways as he did. "Oh, I'll go where they send me," he said. "I expect one army post is much like another. Besides, I expect Mother will have found me a spot where I won't see combat. Somewhere nice and safe for her darling boy. She's in with the shiniest brass."

"Is that what you want?" Dick demanded. He understood, in theory at least, that all positions in the army had some value, even men who stayed in the Pentagon building and went out for cocktails on the way home from work every night, but he couldn't quite square that with the desire to do his part, to see what he was made of, to be the best he could be. He saw that in Nixon sometimes, too, or thought he did.

"Now who's the one who's looking for extra push ups," Nixon commented, and Dick almost rose to the bait, almost said it wasn't the same thing, and Nixon knew it, but the little curl at the edge of Nixon's mouth shut him up. If they were rooming together as well as eating and working together, Dick was going to have to learn not to let Nixon prod a response out of him every single time.

"Right now, I'm just looking for lunch," Dick said, and got up off his footlocker. He inspected his uniform and dusted himself off before opening the flimsy, lock-less door, and holding it open until Nixon followed him out. "You know," he said as they crossed back the way they'd come towards the mess hall, "the way I hear it, the Airborne is a priority unit; if a qualified candidate asks to transfer there, the army has to let him."

Dick didn't look at Nixon, or wait for his reaction, just twisted around Woolchurch and Cameron as they dragged their trunks into their room, and was well ahead of Nixon by the time he got out of the barracks.

He didn't want Nixon to think anything as sentimental as asking him to sign up together, like sweethearts in the Civil War. Even though he had to admit it would be nice if by small chance they could serve together. It was more that Dick thought that Nixon could be more. He had those moments of brilliance, of glowing in his natural talent like the morning star, and every time he excelled, Dick could see it lifting him up out of the rest of it a little. And he always glanced at Dick, wanting to make sure that Dick had noticed.

It would be like Patroclus and Achilles, Dick thought, one of them pushing the other higher and further, until the world lay at their feet. Though he then thought of Thetis' prophecy: that Achilles could live to be an old man who died forgotten, or could be slain as a young man but remembered for eternity.

Achilles had made the choice almost any young man full of war would make, but what if Nixon's route was the wiser one?

* * *

Dick had spent all of his short career in the US Army sleeping next to other men. The lofty rank of corporal had not yet granted him private quarters, or even two-man billets like this, and Dick hadn't foreseen how intimate having just one man breathing next to him in the dark would feel.

The sound of Nixon shifting in his bunk as he got settled sent a series of too vivid images through Dick's head. Knowing that he was just wearing shorts and an undershirt under the sheets was bad enough. Dick could envision the way his thick thighs pushed against the fabric, how his cock made a bulge in the front, even when it was soft. Nixon found the right angle and murmured in sleepy contentment, and that sent a whole new wave of dirty thoughts through Dick's mind. He could just get up, and cross the room, and join Nixon in his bunk, and he'd be welcomed with open arms and open legs.

Did Nixon have any idea what this enclosed proximity was doing to Dick? Was that why he'd arranged to swap billet assignments? If this was a seduction, as of half an hour past lights out, it seemed to be working.

Dick rolled over onto his side so that he gave Nixon his back. He ignored how his cock was starting to stiffen, and ran through the Lord's Prayer in his head. When that didn't help, he turned his mind to equipment manuals, which usually were enough to cool any ardor. That night though, imagining oiling shafts and slotting pieces together wasn't helping in the least.

"Hey, Dick," Nixon said, voice muzzy with fatigue, almost sultry.

"Yeah?"

"You awake?"

Dick chuckled. "No, but I forgot to warn you that I talk in my sleep."

"Cute." Nixon paused, and for a moment Dick wondered if he'd maybe just wanted to check if Dick was awake in order to irritate him. He'd just started to drift off when Nixon asked, "Do you think I'd get into the Airborne?"

"Sure you would," Dick said automatically, but then actually thought about it. Despite the minimal work he appeared put in, Nixon was solidly in the top third of their cohort overall, and probably the very top when it came to field exercises. "You might need to get better PT scores."

"Wonderful," Nixon said.

Dick rolled back over so that he could face him, even though the pitch darkness of the room hid everything. "Are you thinking about applying?" He knew he was doing a miserable job of veiling his enthusiasm, but it was too late now.

"I was thinking it'd royally piss Dad off," Nixon said.

"I don't think my parents will be very happy about it either," Dick admitted. He'd done his best to be a good son, but they weren't the ones who had to make these choices. "But I don't think being a doughboy in the trenches is going to be any safer, when it comes down to it."

"Oh, believe me, safety is not going to be the problem," Nixon said, pouring irony into the space between them like water.

Dick didn't understand. Surely the point of Mrs. Nixon finding Nixon something stateside was to keep him out of harm's way, but he didn't want to pry, not even when Nixon was laying himself open for it. He sometimes felt as if Nixon laid bits of his personal life out like bait, and Dick had never wanted to find out what happened when he tripped the catch.

In the face of Dick's silence, Nixon rolled over and sighed. "Anyway, it's a thought. I don't know if I want to be a trim bronzed killing machine, or just have access to trimmed bronze killing machines."

"Nix," Dick said, but he didn't have anything else to that sentence. He closed his eyes against the dark and tried to push away how Nixon's words made his guts coil with emotions he didn't want to name. How had Nixon been able to take something Dick had been aspiring to and twist it into something sordid and cheap?

"Sounds like a lot of work, anyhow," Nixon concluded, and Dick let that lie where it fell, too. There were times when he wondered if Nixon really was just as shallow and self-involved as he could appear, and it was just Dick's barely suppressed lust that made him seem more interesting. He didn't really believe that though. He could see past that, catch flashes of the perfect clarity of focus.

He listened to Nixon breathing in the dark, to the distant voices and snores of the other men, carried too easily through the plywood walls. Nixon wasn't sleeping yet, but shifting restlessly in his bunk, the wooden frame creaking under him. That sound too, would probably carry to the contiguous room.

"I hope you do apply, Nix," Dick said, not wanting to leave Nixon's apathy as the last word. "I believe you'd do well."

"If only I applied myself?" Nixon asked.

"If it was what you decided to do," Dick evaded.

"I'm still thinking about it," was Nixon's only answer, and that was good enough to let the topic drop.

* * *

The next week had them doing night exercises, and Dick was run so ragged that he barely had time to think about the Airborne, or his lust for Nixon. Maybe it wouldn't be like Nixon implied, joining a more demanding unit. If this pace was anything to go by, the kind of physical fitness the paratroopers required would kill Dick's libido flat.

Though as the week released them, dizzy with odd hours, and exhausted from running in full pack after being up all night, Dick watched most of the rest of his cohort pack onto the bus into Columbus, and wondered at the strength of men's desires. Nixon was with them, and caught Dick's eye on his way out the door, eyebrows raised in question. Dick simply shook his head, and Nixon grimaced and didn't quite roll his eyes, then was gone.

He showed up again on Sunday afternoon, blazingly drunk, and flopped down on the floor next to Dick's bunk. Dick had been lying in a patch of sunlight that was shining perfectly in the middle of his pillow, luxuriating like a cat while holding a novel he wasn't really reading.

"I had a hell of a night," Nixon said, though Dick definitely hadn't asked, and probably didn't want to know.

Still, he felt compelled to set the book aside and make an attentive sound.

"MP's hit that bar, you know, the one you and I were at a couple weeks ago, started arresting everyone in sight who was showing any sign of... well, you can imagine."

"Yes, I can imagine," Dick agreed. He was glad that Nixon wasn't quite drunk enough to forget where he was.

"Pulled a couple sad bastards out of the latrines with their pants still undone. No one I knew," he added, "but made a man glad he'd gone with his second choice, 'cause he was easy, and been in half an hour earlier."

"Nix," Dick hissed. He rolled over until he was curled on the bed, his lips pressed to Nixon's ear. Nixon reeked of alcohol, stale tobacco and a few other things Dick didn't care to name. "What if you'd been caught?"

"You know me," Nixon said, voice at least a little lower now. "I'd have gotten out of it, somehow. You'd be amazed what an MP'll do after you suck him off."

Dick suppressed a surprisingly strong urge to take the Lord's name in vain. "Like beat the tar out of you and have you up in front of a courts martial?"

"You gotta pick your MP, is all," Nixon said with a shrug, as if his entire life hadn't just been on the line, and for what? A moment of sexual release in a piss-soaked men's room in Georgia? The chance to stick it to a father who probably wouldn't care one way or another? Dick supposed that the shame accompanying a dishonorable discharge wouldn't stain Nixon as badly, not with the protection of his family money, but even so.

"You should be more careful!" Dick couldn't help hissing in Nixon's ear. He knew he sounded like someone's mother, but he couldn't help it. The image of Nixon dragged away, maybe bloody, certainly in disgrace, was too much to stand.

"Been all right so far," Nixon said with a shrug. He twisted his head to look back up at Dick. "Why'd you care?"

"I'm your friend, Nix," Dick told him, "And you're a damn fine soldier."

"'Waste helps the enemy!'" Nixon commented, quoting a poster on the mess hall wall. "Maybe I should start a victory garden, while I'm at it."

"It'd be a better use of your time," Dick grumbled, but he knew he'd already lost. Nixon would continue to go to bars, keep meeting friends, and only the special kind of angel that watched over fools would keep him out of the hands of the MPs.

"Never sounded like my style," Nixon said. He let his head drop back against the edge of the bunk and stretched his legs out in front of him.

Dick gave up. What was the use? If Nixon was determined that if a man was going to go down, it should be in flames, there wasn't a heck of a lot Dick would be able to do to slow his descent. Instead of continuing to badger him, he tousled Nixon's hair, which was damp with sweat and oddly sticky, and asked, "Wanna hit the showers?"

"I thought you'd never ask, my darling," Nixon purred, but he needed Dick to haul him to his feet, and steady his arm all the way to the shower block. Walking, he seemed drunker than he had slumped on the floor and rambling on.

Dick had been doing nothing all day save napping and writing letters, but he stripped anyway. He figured someone should go in there and keep Nixon from falling and bashing his head in on the cement floor.

Indeed, Nixon hadn't even managed to get his shoes off, but was leaning against the wall of the change room staring down at them like he'd never expected to encounter shoelaces in his daily life. Dick was already down to shorts and bare feet, but knelt in front of Nixon and started in on his shoes.

"I've definitely thought you'd never ask about that," Nixon said, though Dick hadn't said a word. He was entirely too aware of the proximity between his face and the front of Nixon's trousers, and bent his head so that at least he wasn't staring at Nixon's fly. The laces were tangled, and it took a few moments of concentration to get them undone. In the meantime, Nixon had gotten his jacket and tie off, and was fumbling at his shirt buttons. Finally, he just leaned forward and pulled the whole thing off over his head, so that he was standing there in just his trousers, his suspenders dangling from his hips. Dick was still kneeling in front of him, mostly naked, and seemingly stuck in place. He looked up, gaze skating past Nixon's stomach and chest to his wide, dark eyes. He was staring down at Dick in turn, lips parted, clearly unsure what to do or say next. His dog tags gleamed from the midst of his dark chest hair.

Dick stood so abruptly that he almost slipped on the damp cement. He stripped out of his shorts and turned away from Nixon. He went into the showers, and turned on the one furthest from the door. They all ran off the same pipe, simply turning off and on rather than being adjustable. Normally the temperature ranged from tepid to outright cold, the latter of which Dick was hoping for in order to keep things in control, but the quiet Sunday afternoon had allowed the boilers to get the water all the way up to lukewarm. Dick stepped into the spray and just stood under it for a few moments, listening for the sounds of Nixon's arrival.

He slouched in eventually, his steps heavy and uneven. The shower nearest the door came on, and Dick heard Nixon sigh and the sound of the water change as he stepped into it.

Dick focused on soaping up and washing himself, even though he didn't need it, and wondering if Nixon was going to do anything other than stand under the spray. He caught a glimpse of him as he turned to rinse his back, leaning forward against the wall with his arms spread wide for balance, head hanging as if half asleep. Nixon wasn't moving, and wasn't looking likely to move any time soon. He was, at least, somewhat cleaner than he had been. Dick didn't want to venture as to what he'd done, or what had been in his hair.

"You got any soap?" Nixon asked. Of course he hadn't thought to bring his own.

"Yeah," Dick said. He turned off the shower, and keeping his eyes on the floor crossed to give Nixon his own slim bar. He caught a glimpse of thigh, the round curve of ass, as Nixon took the soap, then turned away. He would wait in the changing room, and Nixon could fall and crack his head open if he wanted to.

"You don't wanna wash my back?" Nixon asked.

"No," Dick lied, but he didn't leave like he'd told himself he would. Instead he stood nearby, feeling the water that had struck Nixon's back and shoulders bounce onto his own body.

"Guess I'm too unclean to even look at, huh?" Nixon asked, and there was a surprising amount of bitterness in his voice. Usually, he just let Dick's slights, the drill sergeants' discipline, the whole world roll off him. Now, whether it was the drink, the lack of sleep, or he'd just finally had enough, Dick could hear real anger in his voice.

"It's not that," Dick said, but he wouldn't look at Nixon. He knew himself well enough to know that he couldn't live with the image of this man naked and rubbing himself all over with Dick's bar of soap exist in his head, and then not do anything about that. He wouldn't be able to handle it.

"Sure it isn't," Nixon muttered. Dick caught the flash of movement out of the corner of his eye, but didn't react fast enough, didn't stop Nixon from reaching out and grabbing his shoulder. His grip was slippery from the soap, but Dick didn't try to shake him off. "You're going into the goddamned Parachute Infantry, you're not afraid of anything, are you?"

It was all too late, anyway. Dick understood that now. He could either look, and deal with the consequences of that later, or he could walk away and risk losing Nix's friendship.

Dick looked. He turned to face Nix, lifted his eyes, and met his gaze square on. Nix's eyes were narrowed, and his jaw set more firmly than his level of sobriety would suggest was possible. He was holding the soap in his free hand, loose at his side, and the spray bouncing off his back and running down his shoulders washed drifts of suds down his chest like pack ice at spring break up. They caught in his chest hair, one clinging to his pebbled nipple before the water swept it away and down. Dick's eyes followed it as it flowed over Nix's ribs and down across his stomach, joining the stream of water channeling into the indent above his thigh, obscuring the dark trail of hair descending from his navel in white soap. More suds caught in the hair around Nixon's cock, and ran down the insides of his thighs, dripped off him to the cement below. Dick watched them for a moment, then looked up again, meeting Nix's gaze, bloodshot but steady. His dark hair was plastered to his head, streaked with soap that ran down his face faster than he could blink it away. Nix didn't seem to care.

"I don't think you're unclean," Dick said firmly, and believed it.

"You ever think that maybe you aren't either?" Nix asked, and then, when Dick stared at him open-mouthed with shock, shook his head in pity and turned back to the water.

Dick left him to it, dressing and walking back to the barracks by himself. If Nix was sober enough to say that to Dick, he probably wasn't going to slip and die in the showers.

His question echoed through Dick's skull, unshakable as the chorus of the latest Tin Pan Alley hit. Nix certainly wasn't wrong in his implied answer. Dick never had considered that the H situation, as Nix called it, was anything other than wrong, even unclean, though that wasn't the kind of language the Lutherans used for it, more in his paternal grandfather's Mennonite line of thought: worldly, ungodly, outside of right relationship with the Lord. Plainly put: a sin.

The Bible said it, the law said it, Dick's family if asked would certainly say it. Everyone would say it, except, it seemed, Sergeant Lewis Nixon. On any other topic, other than alcohol, if someone had asked Dick which side he would pick when it came down to Nixon vs. the World, he wouldn't have hesitated. Now, Dick wondered.

He hung his towel to dry, took off his shoes and lay on his bunk, staring up at the low ceiling. The bell for evening chow sounded, but Dick wasn't hungry, and he was sure that Nixon wouldn't be able to keep food down anyway. As the scuff and thump of boots receded, Nixon trudged in, head down, towel hanging limply from his hand. He hadn't shaved or combed his hair, and for all that he was clearly cleaner, he still looked disheveled.

Dick had been right in his guess that he wouldn't be able to look at Nix and not imagine what he looked like under his uniform, but it was too late now. Dick turned back to his contemplation of the ceiling, but wasn't surprised when Nix slumped to the floor next to Dick's bed as he had earlier, instead of having the decency to keep to his side of the room.

"I didn't tell you what happened after the raid," Nix said, voice almost conversational, almost sober.

"No," Dick agreed. "You didn't."

"One of the guys who dodged out with me happened to have a friend, who was having a party that night, a 'daisy chain,' and asked if I wanted to come. I asked what it would be like, if they ever got raided, and he said no, it was perfectly safe, inside someone's home, and none of the neighbors noticed a few friends coming over for a party now and then." He laughed. "A few friends for a party. Ha. You know what it was, Dick?"

"I'd expect it was an orgy," Dick commented, but even so Nix laughed again and said, "It was a goddamn orgy."

Dick didn't have to ask if Nix had stayed. Of course he had; why wouldn't he?

"Goddamned orgy," Nix muttered again, closing his eyes to bring the memory back. He smiled to himself, but it had a tight, mocking twist to it. "Went all night, half way through the morning. While you were on your knees in Chaplin Lovik's little do, I was on my knees—" He stopped when Dick rolled away to face the wall.

"I don't want to hear it, Nix," Dick said, words so thick in his throat that they nearly choked him.

The thought of Nix naked in a room full of strangers, all sucking and screwing each other again and again, was already flooding his mind, washing away every other thought he might have had. His stomach twisted, and he put a hand over his mouth, but it wasn't nausea. It wasn't even disgust. It was envy. Dick didn't want Nix to go into latrines with boys he picked up in the bar. He certainly didn't want him to go to orgies. It wasn't just because he was playing with fire, and that if he got burned it would end his career, and Dick wouldn't get to see him anymore.

He expected that Nix would call him a prude, but he didn't. He just slouched against Dick's bunk, and Dick couldn't tell if he was contemplating the adventures of the night before, or just napping.

"Is it always like that?" Dick asked, rolling onto his back so that he could catch Nix's response out of the corner of his eye.

Nix stirred, opened his eyes and blinked against the glare of their room's single bare lightbulb. "Like what?"

Dick wasn't entirely sure he knew. He licked his lips trying to think what it was he wanted to know, and what questions Nix was likely to understand. "When you're like... well, I guess when you're like us, does it have to be like that: a different stranger every time, bars and orgies and..." Dick gave up.

"I suppose you'd rather settle down and get married," Nix said, in the exact same tone he would have used if he'd called Dick a prude. "Mr. and Mr. Queer in their little queer household, maybe adopt some cats."

He wanted to tell Nix to stop it, to leave him alone, but he knew that the whole thing was as ridiculous as Nix made it sound. "'For it is better to marry than to burn,'" Dick quoted. He didn't think that was what Saint Paul had meant, but Dick certainly felt as if he were on the verge of not being able to contain himself, so maybe it was.

Nix laughed. "Yeah, funny story: it turns out that I tried that."

The other bit of Paul's advice on the topic was to give oneself over to fasting and prayer, which Dick had tried, without much luck, so he kept it to himself.

He couldn't just be damned, they both couldn't be. That wasn't just or merciful or fair. The idea of it set Dick's teeth on edge and made him want to cry out at the injustice of it. Paul had also said that God would never suffer a man to be tempted above that he was able to bear. This, with Nix lolling on the edge of the bed, talking about how just any man could have him if he wanted was certainly verging on that. Nix himself was almost too much to bear, just in his workaday life.

"Maybe you didn't try it with the right person," Dick said, thinking of the wife Nix casually classed with prostitutes.

"Ha. You volunteering, then?" Nix asked.

"No," Dick said, but he wasn't as sure as he made that flat denial sound.

"What, you're not willing to lie back and think of God and Country just to keep little old me out of the flames of hell?" Nix asked.

Dick was beginning to suspect that Nix was an atheist. Still, he couldn't help laughing at the image of how Nix saw him. "If only you'd stay faithful to me," he said.

He'd expected Nix to run with that, talk about how he'd be the best little wife, or on the other hand make up a story about how he'd always be true to Dick in his fashion. Instead, Nix groaned and said nothing.

Men started to come back from dinner, and Dick combed through his mind to come up with some change of conversation. He almost asked if Nix had heard from his wife, but that seemed a little _too_ pointed given Dick's last comment. If he talked about the weather, they'd both probably run screaming from the room.

"I put in my paperwork for that airborne transfer today," Dick said, "It's pending my evaluation at OCS, but I think I have a shot at it. My parents aren't thrilled, that's for sure." He'd gotten a very explicit letter on the topic the previous Friday, and his ears were still ringing with his mother's feelings.

"Mmm," Nix said, apparently finally asleep.

Dick sat up and looked down at him. His shower-damp hair was soaking into the edge of Dick's blanket, and the way his head tipped back exposed the stubbled stretch of his throat. It would serve him right if Dick just left him there to wake up with a strained neck in the morning. Instead, he got up and crouched between Nix's spread legs, shaking his shoulder until he groaned in protest. Then Dick hauled him to his feet, dragged him the three feet to his own bunk and dumped him there. He wasn't taking Nix's shoes off for him twice in one day.

As exhausting as the whole conversation had been, Dick wasn't ready to go to bed an hour before lights out. He thought of taking another damn walk, but he didn't think that would be enough. In the end, he changed into his PT gear, and ran circuits around the track until his mind cleared, and he didn't once think of Nix.

Then he showered again, this time using the soap out of Nix's footlocker, and fell into bed.

* * *

Dick had been afraid that Nix in the shower, or Nix with all those other men would fill his dreams, but instead he found himself in the hills of Vermont. He'd spent a summer up there as a teenager, working as a ranch hand, but in the dream it wasn't that farm, just a farm with those blue-green hills stretching in every direction. Dick went into the house that he knew was his own, looking for Nix. He found him, finally, in the kitchen staring out at the barnyard behind the house. Dick went to stand behind Nix, bracketing him with his legs on the outside of Nix's, and wrapping his arms around Nix's waist. Nix's back pressed against Dick's chest, and a sense of comfort and belonging flooded through them both, a feeling profound that Dick couldn't put words to it. All he knew that it was what coming home meant.

He woke with a feeling of loss keen enough to bring tears to his eyes, as though something in his soul knew that image would never be his, and he was forever impoverished for that. Dick wiped his eyes on the edge of his blanket, and rolled over, trying to catch a few more hours of sleep, but in the end he couldn't.

Threads of the dream lingered in his mind, and put him in a dreary mood all morning, which matched Nix's resentful hangover. They didn't have the privacy to talk much, in any case, but Dick had the feeling that Nix didn't want to anyway, or felt that maybe already he'd said too much the night before. Dick wasn't sure if he'd said too much or not nearly enough, and the thought nagged at him.

They were learning about communications and cryptography that day, and Nix slept quietly in the back corner of the classroom, coming awake when Dick kicked his ankle, always with the right answer at the tip of his tongue.

The next morning started out warm, and by the time they were set loose into the field—this time to lay communications wires, and observe and report on "enemy" troop movements—it was well into the nineties with around a hundred percent humidity. Nix had managed to get partnered with Dick again, though they were supposed to shuffle up, and looked significantly less green around the gills than the day before.

Dick wanted to ask Nix what he was going to do when he was in the actual war, but didn't think he'd like the answer. Besides, in combat, there weren't weekends off base, were there? So it seemed like it would be less of a problem.

Certainly, Dick was glad that he wasn't hauling heavy rolls of radio wire through a Georgia swamp with someone who needed to keep stopping to vomit. The heat and mosquitoes were bad enough as it was.

Finally, they established their observation post, and Dick flopped on his stomach next to the comms set. He had to call in their status on the handset, then when HQ simulated a line failure, tap it out in Morse code on the key pad.

They'd set up in a shallow depression on the side of a rise, which had a decent view of the creek bed below them, and enough bushes to make their position reasonably difficult to see. Though from the cigarette butts and candy wrappers, Dick suspected that this was not an unusual spot to pick, and that if the instructors wanted to launch an ambush, they would be sitting ducks.

"You want to move?" Nix asked. His eyes swept over the shallow bowl of terrain in front of him, but there wasn't really anywhere else with both a view and some kind of cover. "Maybe to somewhere in the shade?"

"No," Dick told him, still thinking it over. "I don't think it's going to be that kind of test."

"Okay." Nix flopped down beside Dick, and started to tug the bushes around a bit to make a better screen. Like Dick, he was drenched in sweat, his ODs sticking to his back, and red-brown Georgia dust coating his face. Nix took his helmet off, scratched his fingers through his hair, spraying them both with sweat, and put it back on. "This is going to be a real bastard of a day," he muttered, taking a swig from his canteen. "Water?"

"Is it?" Dick asked. He made a show of sniffing the canteen before he drank. It was water—lukewarm and tasting of minerals and chlorine—and he took a long swig. "Thanks."

"We should probably go easy on that," Nix said.

"Right, sorry." Dick had already drunk most of his water on the trek out here. Pennsylvanian summers got hot, but even in August they didn't have the clinging wet heat of late spring in Georgia that made him want to claw his skin off just to get away from it. It seemed like he'd perspired out every sip of water even as he took it, the thirst never leaving his body.

"What are you going to do if they send you to the Pacific?" Nix asked from behind his field glasses.

"Probably die of heat stroke before I see combat," Dick grumbled. "Do you think Italy's better?"

"Depends on the time of year," Nix answered casually, and then started to tell Dick about a family trip and the worst sun burn he'd had in his life, as opposed to a different family trip where he'd very nearly gotten frostbite. He told it like a joke, but Dick had an impression of a dark-haired miscreant escaping his nanny and running around a foreign country unsupervised because his parents had more important things to do than look after him. At least it was something to think about other than how hot and sticky and miserable he was.

They checked in every half hour, reporting nothing seen or heard. Dick's suspicion that they'd be easily spotted was fading as he slowly became one with the dust. The more he perspired, the more it clung to his skin and ground into his uniform. He wasn't even moving around much, but somehow just lying there felt like being cooked into the earth, like a piece of chicken on a steel baking sheet.

"You want to trade off now?" Dick asked around 1300. They'd just finished tins of something that had probably been meat once, crackers and chocolate bars, all of which clogged Dick's mouth like sawdust.

"Here," Nix said, and passed his canteen again. Dick was already taking a drink when he realized it was the last of it. It was too late to stop the slide of water from the canteen into his mouth. They wouldn't be called in from the field for at least another four hours, after the worst of the day's heat.

"Sorry," Dick muttered as he handed it back. Nix just shrugged and clipped it back to his belt.

"Hang tough," Nix said, and Dick rolled his eyes at him. He had, it seemed, said that a few too many times. Rolling his eyes made his temples throb, and he dropped his head into the dust, not caring at the grit that ground itself into his cheek.

"You think we're going to be the post that has to sit here and report nothing happening for twelve hours?" Dick asked.

"I was starting to," Nix said, "but I've got movement: five hundred yards west, two, no, three men, traversing south."

The phone part of the comm set was still "broken," so Dick started tapping his report through on the key, trying to remember the code words and cipher for that time of day. The ping of his headphone in his ear, sent a shot of pain through his head, and he found himself closing his eyes and working by feel, which at least cut the glare of the sun. It helped with his eyes, but didn't stop it baking his helmet like a can of beans. Dick cursed himself. He'd been stupid not to have packed a shelter half to build them shade, or at least packed extra canteens.

The world darkened, and Dick sighed in relief, sending up a silent prayer of thanks to whatever wisp of cloud had drifted in front of the sun. When Dick cracked an eyelid to see how long the relief might last, he found that Nix had moved over a little so that he was shading Dick with his own body as he knelt and watched the clandestine troop movements along the creek bed. "Thanks, Lew," he murmured, and Nix shook his head.

When their sector had fallen still again, Nix set the field glasses down, but didn't move. Dick watched flies buzzing around him, and runnels of sweat trickling down his neck to soak his collar.

"Hey, I've got these," Nix said, and produced a pair of apples from his pocket. He handed one to Dick, and took a bite out of the other. It was last fall's and mushy, blood warm from sitting in Nix's pocket, but Dick still wanted to hold it against his cheek and cry. Instead he bit into it and whimpered slightly as the juice trickled down his throat even before he started to chew. He made himself savor it instead of tearing through the whole thing like he wanted to. He picked down to the core, and then past that, until there was nothing but the stem and the seeds left. Dick almost licked the juice off his fingers, but his hands were too dirty.

When he looked up at Nix, he was smiling slightly, watching Dick with an expression of profound fondness.

Dick licked his chapped lips and murmured, "Thanks."

Nix nodded and went back to scanning their sector.

There were two kinds of men in the world, Dick thought, and Nix was the kind who would share his water when he himself was thirsty. He hadn't had to; Dick had been the one who'd been stupid, and could have been the one to suffer for it. If they'd been out the day before, and Nix had been hungover and miserable, Dick probably would have let himself feel just a little smug at the obvious comeuppance.

"You're a good man, Nix," Dick said.

Nix started to laugh, then stared down at Dick with narrowed eyes. He shook his head slightly and took up the field glasses again, not saying anything.

Dick thought about trying to explain the bit of Luke's Gospel about knowing people by their fruits, and Nix had given him a fruit, and Nix was a fruit, and so was Dick, but Nix would just laugh at him. Actually, even thinking about it made Dick start to giggle.

"Heat's getting to you," Nix commented, not looking down.

"Yeah, maybe," Dick admitted. He held his breath until he stopped laughing, pressing his hand over his mouth. Then he thought of another significant fruit in the scripture, one often depicted as an apple, and started to laugh all over again. The really funny part of it all was that it wasn't far wrong, at least not over the course of their relationship. Before he'd met Nix, Dick had been pretending that ignorance was freedom from sin. Now, in his own way, his eyes had been opened. He had knowledge of good and evil, and it was up to him to decide what to do with it.

The dirt behind them scuffed, and then Sergeant Gunnarsen was crouched in their depression. Nix started and dropped the binoculars, wincing as they hit his chest with a thud; Dick choked on his laughter and ended up coughing dryly. How the hell could a man that big move that quietly.

"As you were," Gunnarsen snapped as they tried to turn and salute. "Nixon. Aren't you supposed to be on comms?"

"I did a shift from 1100 to 1400, Sergeant," Nix lied smoothly.

Gunnarsen made a skeptical noise deep in his throat that sounded like strained steel about to give, then asked, "You boys drink all your water?"

"Yes, Sergeant," Nix said before Dick could deny their stupidity.

"Thought you two were smarter than this," Gunnarsen snapped, but then he unclipped two fresh canteens and put them on the dirt next to the comms set. Somehow, they were still cool enough that the bottles were perspiring. "I expect better tomorrow."

"Yes, Sergeant," Dick and Nix said at once, but he was already gone.

They shared a look, then reached for the canteens at the same moment. How the hell they were still cold, Dick had no idea, but he started wiping the condensation all over his face.

"That's it," Nix said as he slowly tipped the bottle back, letting the water trickle into his parched mouth. A trickle overflowed the mouth of the bottle and ran down his chin and neck, clearing a pale path in the red dust. "I'm divorcing Kathy and marrying this canteen."

Dick didn't say anything, too busy downing his own water in grateful silence, but he wished Nix would, at least when it came to the first part.

Of course at the end of the day, they had to roll up the damn cable and lug it back to the base. Dick and Nix trudged into camp with barely enough time to shower before mess. In the dizzy, dehydrated exhaustion that ended the day, Dick found that he was scrubbing the ingrained dirt off Nix's back without even thinking of what it felt like to touch another man and see his nakedness. The rush of tepid water over them just felt too good, and so did the soapy slide of Nix's skin under his hands.

Dick groaned as Nix reciprocated. He tipped his head back and opened his mouth to gulp down the terrible-tasting water, feeling like he'd never have enough again so long as he lived. He formed a clear image of what heaven might look like, and it was endless water to drink, and Nix's strong hands on his body.

They barely bothered to dry themselves, instead preferring to soak their fresh uniforms and let the evening breeze, which had finally kicked in, cool their bodies. They walked to the mess hall so close their shoulders kept brushing, and Dick didn't know why he couldn't stop smiling.

When they hit their bunks that evening, Nix pulled out one of Dick's code books and started to scan its pages, eyes moving back and forth so quickly that Dick wasn't sure how he was taking any of it in.

All Dick wanted to do was fall into bed and lie on his stomach like roadkill until either reveille or the trumpets heralding the new Jerusalem, but instead stood with his hands in his pockets, staring down at Nixon. "Are you studying?"

Nixon glanced up at Dick with that "what are you joking?" look then shrugged, and said, "No, I'm looking for those dirty pictures you always hide in your field manuals. Don't think I haven't figured out why you spend so much time looking at them."

"Funny," Dick said flatly, and kept his eyes on Nix until he broke down.

"It's just that I hear the Airborne only takes officers who graduate at the top of their class in all areas of study." Nix couldn't hold Dick's gaze when he said that, and went back to scanning the book.

"You're already at the top of this class, Lewis," Dick argued, but his heart wasn't in it, not when it seemed like this day was determined to give him everything he'd ever wanted.

"Gotta make up for those PT marks," was all Nix said.

Dick knew that he should let the man study, but he couldn't resist prodding at Nix's sudden industry like a man would poke at a bruise to check if it hurt. "I guess you really want to P.O. your dad, huh?"

"Sure I do," Nix agreed, but he put down the book and rolled to his knees so that he was of a height with Dick, "and maybe I want to see where this takes us." He folded his arms and looked at Dick levelly instead of putting up his usual front and waiting for Dick to see past it. "Don't you?"

He might not have figured everything out yet, but Dick knew enough to understand that the "us" was the most important word in that sentence. "Yeah," he said. "Yeah, I do."

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos totally make my day, and I very much appreciate comments of every length, percentage of emoji, and level of coherency.


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